PODCAST: Godzilla: King of the Monsters [Electric Shadows]

In episode 65, we welcome a special guest to The Electric Shadows Podcast.

Regular listeners will know that frequent ESP contributor Ian Bird knows his movies. What you may not be aware of is Ian’s 10-year-old son Ronan is also something of a film authority, particularly when it comes to monster flicks.…

LFF Day 3: La La Land & Manchester By The Sea

Rhapsodic Hollywood dreaming and glacial Massachusetts misery on London Film Festival Day 3.

 

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone soar in Damien Chazelle’s radiant love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals and those who dare to follow their dreams in the City of Angels.

Carol is a transcendent plea for kindness and beauty

With sapphic romantic drama Carol, Todd Haynes confirms himself as a master of forbidden love.

In 2002’s Far From Heaven, stylized as a Sirkian ‘50s melodrama, he doubled down on issues of race and sexuality. Here, however, it all comes down to a single relationship between black-bobbed shop-girl Therese (Rooney Mara) and reluctant socialite Carol (Cate Blanchett), whose eyes meet across a crowded store one busy December morning.…

The Wolf of Wall Street: Scorsese howling into the void?

Apart from perhaps Steven Spielberg, the career of Martin Scorsese is unparalleled in the last fifty years of Hollywood.

Not only does his contribution to cinema define an entire genre – name a modern crime film that doesn’t owe some debt to Goodfellas – he consistently seems to take on only the films that he wants to make, only the projects that interest him.…